by Rod Miller
The marshal never passed up an opportunity to remind the prisoner of his criminal behavior and the need to repay society for violating the law of the land. Again and again he made the case.
It is as if, somehow, that endless repetition serves to convince the marshal that his own role in these events is justified.
Even so simple an act as the performance of his duty in delivering a meal to the condemned occasioned ire and resentment on the part of the young deputy. He could not resist belittling the imprisoned and begrudging him his last supper.
A visit from the condemned’s erstwhile companion, called McNulty by his host, served to upset rather than calm Harlow Mackelprang. I sensed that this was, in fact, the visitor’s motive all along—more so than the delivery of a flask of whiskey. The man seemed to bait the bandit leader, teasing him in subtle ways that his victim did not discern.
The hangman came by to take Harlow Mackelprang’s measurements and to educate the man about the particulars of a hanging. He did so, it seems, only to facilitate his performance of the unpleasant task, and not to contribute to the condemned’s ease with the situation. In fact, he made no bones about the fact that the gunman’s death was of little or no consequence; merely another job of work.
And Althea. The lovely Althea, whose acquaintance I would enjoy making in more congenial circumstances (and may yet), arrived here solely to extract some measure of revenge. In some sense, her cause was just. But how much greater would her reward have been had she offered forgiveness rather than reprisal.
And the preacher.
While I sat as silent witness to the other visitors this night, I could not hold my tongue in the presence of that self-righteous excuse for a man of God.
To hear him tell it, one would be led to believe that the Holy Bible ended with the Book of Malachi. He regaled Harlow Mackelprang with “thou shalt nots” and blood and revenge from the Old Testament as if the grace and mercy and forgiveness of Our Savior had no place in our earthly travail.
Not that it made much difference to Harlow Mackelprang, he being devoid of any religious inclinations.
Be that as it may, it is my belief that one of the Lord’s messengers ought to lend comfort to a sinner in Harlow Mackelprang’s situation, rather than torment the poor soul with more affliction.
The reporter who visited cared little about recording the views of Harlow Mackelprang for posterity. His motive was grasping greed and lowly pride, with the gunman nothing more than a tool. The interview offered the possibility for the hopeful scribe to aggrandize himself at the expense of the condemned’s unfortunate circumstances and reap filthy lucre for a reward.
Ah, but who am I to pass judgment? I am in no better position to cast a stone than any other man. I sometimes fear, in moments of deep contemplation, that my means of livelihood would not bear close scrutiny.
Then again, whose would?
It is with the best of intentions that I represent the enterprises in my portfolio.
After all, who am I to say that the Alta Paso Short Line Railway will not be built?
Who is to say the Arapaho Valley irrigation project will not hold water?
How can one know in advance if a mining claim will or will not pan out?
If the promoters say they intend to develop a project, I take them at their word. There is risk, of course. Every investment inherently carries a certain amount of risk, and I always, always, include in my sales presentations a reminder of that fact (even though I may tend to downplay that aspect of the transaction).
And when it comes right down to it, an investor who risks money he cannot afford to lose is, at best, imprudent and, more likely, a fool. My motives are likewise with life insurance, Doctor Wolff’s preparation, or even the Good Book itself.
My responsibility is only on making such available; it is the duty of the buyer to determine the wisdom of the investment or expenditure.
I am sure the judge, if well read on the statutes, will be cognizant of these facts—facts according to law, if not ethics—and will readily dismiss the complaint against me. The allegations will be expunged, my record with the legal system cleared, and my good name restored.
Fraud is, after all, such an ugly, ugly word.
As for now, I wait.
And I wait alone, for the time being. I must say that after the parade of visitors throughout the evening and into the night, the solitude is not altogether unwelcome. In fact, in more salubrious circumstances and with better accommodations, I might find privacy of this degree desirable. In this jail cell, however, it is discomfiting.
Once Harlow Mackelprang was led away, a silence descended upon this place like a pall.
No one, of course, occupies a cell here now save myself. No marshal or deputy stirs in the outer office. No footsteps nor hoofbeats nor the rattle of trace chains filter in through the window.
The only sound is the distant hum created by the crowd—every man, woman, and child from Los Santos and for miles around, I suspect—that has gathered to witness the demise of Harlow Mackelprang.
Why they choose to do so escapes me. Turning death into a celebratory festival is a savage and brutal practice, and one we must abandon if we are to become a truly civilized society.
Alas, it is not to be.
So I wish they would hang Harlow Mackelprang and get it over with so life can return to some semblance of normalcy. Starting, I should hope, with this morning’s ration of biscuits and beans. Or is it beans and biscuits this time?
I shall be glad to see it in either case.
TUELLER
Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper will soon be a malodorous mess in the seat of his trousers.
Such nasty facts of life (or should I say death?) are not often associated with the genteel life of a banker. But being raised the son of an undertaker, I have personal knowledge of such things. Oftentimes at death, and virtually always in cases of sudden or violent death, bladder and bowel involuntarily vacate.
I do not know how many in the crowd here this morning to witness the hanging of Harlow Mackelprang are aware of this curious fact. But I know that many will become aware once his neck is stretched.
And yet the unfortunate aspect of this unpleasantness is that the man himself will not be aware of it. The stink will not haunt him, as the odor of blood haunts me. His skin will not be irritated by the warmth and wetness, the way mine quivers still at the memory of trickling gore. He will not stand elbow-deep in wash water, attempting to grind away with soap and scrub board the stains he leaves on his own clothing, as I have attempted to remove the crimson stains his deed left on mine.
And no longer will his spirit (if he has one) and mind be troubled (if ever they were) as mine are by the image of a human body being blown apart before his eyes.
I have felt guilt and shame these past three weeks because I did not act to prevent the awful deed.
I attempt to justify my inaction with the belief that there was nothing I could have done; no action I might have taken would have altered the course of events in any significant way or changed the outcome. The marshal shares this belief, and has made every attempt to relieve my guilt.
And yet I wonder—would I have acted if circumstances had allowed?
I do not know.
I suppose I will never know.
And I am not altogether certain that I want to know.
Having been raised during the formative years of my life (all my life, in fact, until moving to Los Santos to manage my uncle’s bank) in the peaceful, genteel city of Franklin, Pennsylvania, I was not accustomed to the “life of action” that seems prevalent among men here in the West.
As I said, my father was an undertaker with a thriving practice. I was always bookish by nature and, I see now, overindulged by my parents. The result of this upbringing was a delicate boy who became a delicate man.
Aimless and lacking direction, I languished at the university for a number of years until Mother’s brother suggested that I come West to l
earn the banking business and take over management of his bank in Los Santos.
(An ulterior motive, no doubt, of my uncle and my parents in this gesture was the belief that exposure to the rugged ways of the frontier would serve to “toughen me up” and make a man of me.)
And so here I have lived these past fourteen years.
My journey west was, in every aspect, an eyeopening experience. Although I was able to cover the entire distance in the relative comfort and safety of the railroad, and was not required to “rough it” in stagecoaches or on horseback, the amenities certainly diminished with distance from home.
As I made my way across the continent, the main lines divided into branches, then into feeder lines to serve the larger railroads, and finally the nearly empty rails that ended (as I would later learn) in the mountains at Meeker’s Mill, not far beyond my destination of Los Santos.
As the railroads probed further from civilization, so too did the trains that traveled on them—cars and trains, made up for the comfort and convenience of the passenger trade, were jettisoned, replaced with conveyances to accommodate freight and livestock. Pullman coaches dropped off, leaving only upholstered cars for passengers. Then these gave way to noisy, drafty, rattletrap cars equipped only with wooden benches.
The rest of the world, too, changed with the approach and arrival of the West.
The forests to which I was accustomed lined the rails for days, broken naturally only by a watercourse, or where the woods had been cleared for farms and villages. Further west, the skeletons of girdled trees were still evident, along with stumps in the fields and yards.
Later still, the trees diminished, then seemingly disappeared altogether, replaced by an endless rolling carpet of grass. The prairies gave way to plains; the grass grew sparse, bunched and clustered across a land broken, irregular, and uneven.
That too gave way to desolation and desert. The land and everything on it—what little was on it—were all the same monotonous hues of dusty, sun-faded browns, dry and hard as cracked leather.
The confinement of the East was gone. No more limited views or close surroundings. I had entered a world without borders or boundaries. Nothing, in any direction, could restrict one’s outlook, except discomfort with the wide unknown.
The landscape’s lack of restraint spilled over onto the people as well, washing away convention and social graces. The genteel first-class travelers at the beginning of my journey slowly but surely deteriorated until they too became rough, unkempt, crude; later as dull, hard, and hostile as the accommodations and the landscape.
Most of the travelers were by then men. They were unwashed, for the most part, and the stink of their bodies blended with the stench of whatever mixture of blood, mud, grease, and grime coated their outerwear in thick layers. I dared not contemplate the state of their underwear.
One night as the train clattered along, I attempted sleep—with one eye open—while a gambling game of cards carried on in the car. The players dealt the pasteboards out on a plank balanced on their knees, which was loudly upset when one jumped to his feet.
“You’re cheatin’ me!” he shouted, attempting to pull a pistol from his belt.
I suspect he would have drawn and fired the piece had he not been so inebriated—a crockery jug of some foul mixture having made it around the table as often as the cards.
Two other players rolled and slid sideward to distance themselves from the fumbling gunman while the third stood, revealing a knife from somewhere on his person as he rose. It was a large skinning knife, perhaps two inches deep from top of blade to bottom, and a good ten inches of length extended from the man’s hand. I could see, in the instant, it was well used, as repeated sharpening had created a slight concave curve along the cutting surface.
The knife-wielder said, “Sit down, you damn fool,” to the man still fumbling for his gun. “You’re just too damn drunk to read the spots on the cards.”
“You’re a cheat!”
“Leave that gun in that leather, or I’ll lay you open. I swear I will.”
Obviously the drunker of the two, the one with the pistol continued his awkward attempts to extricate the revolver, which he finally did, drawing back the hammer with an ominous metallic snap and click. But before the piece could be leveled in the direction of its target, the knife blade flashed, slicing through a filthy cloth coat and shirt fabric to cut a lengthy gash across the angle of the forearm holding the pistol.
I believe to this day that I heard the tick of the blade bouncing off bone.
The injured man let loose his grip on the pistol, which dropped to the floor and hit with a clunk among the scattered cards and coin as his free hand grasped the cut arm.
“You knifed me, you sorry bastard!” he screamed in disbelief as blood welled from between his fingers and pitter-patted in crimson drops to the floor, further soiling the greasy cards.
“I told you to leave that gun alone.”
“I’m bleedin’, damn you!”
“You’re lucky you ain’t dead. If we wasn’t partners I’d have let your guts out where you stand.”
He again thrust the knife toward the injured man, who flinched at the motion. But he turned the knife blade sideways and wiped both sides clean of blood on the front of his victim’s shirt. “Now get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind.”
The bleeding man stumbled—whether faint from his injury or from lack of sobriety I cannot say—toward and beyond me to the end of the car, where he propped himself on the bench in a dark corner, still clutching his wound. In the dim fringe of the light of the lanterns hanging in the coach, the blood looked black as it seeped through his fingers and the stain spread through the coarse weave of the grimy fabric of his coat sleeve.
There are other examples I could proffer of the shock and excitement of my introduction to the frontier. Few incidents were as violent as the altercation on the train, but many events served to school me in the harsh manner in which men dealt with one another.
I was, obviously, unprepared for such means and methods. Still, I settled in at Los Santos in the relative safety of my uncle’s family, and proceeded to learn the banking business. Over the course of a few years I mastered the job and managed to establish myself in a serviceable and independent bachelor household of my own.
Since managing the basics of the bank’s operations, I have become expert with experience, and my uncle has barely set foot in the place for a number of years. I might add that my ability to maximize the limited financial opportunities available here has contributed to making his retirement a comfortable one. I should say as well that I have enjoyed banking and Los Santos and have made every effort to fit in, and feel I have become accepted in this wild and rough place.
But after being showered with bits and pieces of my clerk’s bodily parts and fluids, and enduring the aftermath of that awful occasion, I am no longer sure if I will (or even can) remain here.
Living that terrible day was very trying. Reliving it as one of only two witnesses at Harlow Mackelprang’s murder trial was only marginally less so.
“Mr. Tueller, what is your position at the bank?” the prosecutor asked, once the formalities of swearing in and identifying myself were out of the way.
“My office is that of vice president. My job is that of manager.”
“And were you at work in the bank on the day in question?”
“Yes.”
“Please recount your recollection of the events of that day as they relate to the defendant, Harlow Mackelprang.”
“I was at my desk, as usual, writing correspondence and doing book work. As always, it was a quiet day. A few customers had visited earlier, but only Calvin, the clerk, and myself were in the bank when the door burst open and a man strode in carrying a gun. A shotgun, I believe, with a short barrel.”
“Did you recognize the man?”
“Certainly. It was Harlow Mackelprang. He used to live here. In Los Santos, I mean.”
Harlo
w Mackelprang was already a fixture in the community when I arrived in Los Santos. Stories of his doings were continuously grinding through the rumor mills. It seemed that wherever trouble reared its head, he was involved (or suspected of being so). He was caught often enough to lend credence to the suspicions, but it would not surprise me if other youthful (or even adult) offenders got away with any number of transgressions that were blamed on Harlow Mackelprang as a matter of course.
Tales were told of his stealing all manner of things, from a pie cooling on a windowsill to the theft, then abuse or killing of animals. Besides thievery, he was a known bully who took advantage of anyone smaller or weaker.
He avoided confrontation with all others, they say, because of cowardice and fear. He was also branded a sneak and a Peeping Tom. I do not doubt that all of these accusations had their basis in fact, but I would not be surprised if there were exaggerations at work as well.
In any event, virtually anything that happened in Los Santos that was beyond the pale of law or common decency was entered as a debit against Harlow Mackelprang. If there were any entries in his asset column, I was never made aware of the fact. (But that may be because no one would have given him credit for any good deed he might have committed.)
As I recall, things took a turn for the worse so far as the criminal history of Harlow Mackelprang is concerned about three years ago.
He had reached his majority about that time and had taken up drinking in a serious way. (Not that he hadn’t been a drinker prior to that time; he simply became more public about it.) One would think that the difficulties drink had created for his father (a famous lush) would have made him cognizant of the ill effects of alcohol, but such, apparently, was not the case.
As the story was told to me, a bout of drinking and gambling at the local saloon got out of hand and an altercation with another cardplayer led to gunplay, resulting in Harlow Mackelprang’s wounding of the other player. He then, they say, discharged several more rounds into the glassware and fixtures of the saloon. From all accounts, thus began his career as a gunman.